Page 26 - Sarpedon’dan Keykubad’a Bir Zamanlar Antalya

In this war, Apollo, who is always mentioned with the Lycian
army, is mentioned from Homeros as the ruler of Lycia. So much
so that, at the request of the chief god, he brought the body of
Sarpedon, the only son of Zeus, the commander-in-chief of Ly-
cia, who had his name written into immortality with golden letters
in this war, back to his country of Lycia.
“Dear phoibos (Apollo), go now,
Take Sarpedon away from under the pike rain…
Let them take it quickly and leave it to the fertile Lycian soil...”
He is the archer god Apollo. So much so that in the Letoon,
the Lycians embellished with the bow and arrow of their chief
god, the temple of Apollon, which stood side by side with his
mother’s and sister’s temples. This feature does not derive from
his father Zeus, because the Greeks are masters of the pike,
so he must have derived his talent from the ancestors of Leto,
together with her sister Artemis who was the judge of animals.
With his arrows the great plague spread through the Achaean
army; the great archer Pandaros shot Menelaos with the arrow
which he gave as a gift, and the great war starts again, also with
Apollo’s help, when prince Paris shot the mighty Achilles just at
the place where he could be killed.

“...trembling gods from head to toe
Did he ever walk in Zeus’ palace,
Did he comeclose and stretch hisbright bow,
all the gods jump up.”

25